Science is the exception. Most people rubberstamp the cosmological model of their culture: flat earth / 3D earth. They have no more interest in how the ideas could be tested than they have competence at testing. Flat? makes sense. Circular? spherical? makes no sense at all. Ordinarily this is harmless: casting my fly to where a bass might lurk in ambush it makes no difference to me whether a ship far enough at sea would fall off the edge of the earth or just keep sailing: till it came back home, to Liverpool.

Churches get founded to rubberstamp familiar answers to duplicate questions. God made the earth, he made it a few thousand years ago. He sent his son so that we could indulge in our lust for drinking blood, eating human flesh, in this case the god’s flesh. His name is Jehovah. We rubberstamp that story until it’s time to go to war over whether the blood is really blood, really Jesus’ blood, or just grape juice. We kill each other, and then there’s just one rubber stamp found still active: Yes, or No. Yes, it’s blood, divine blood, redeming blood, the universe a pawn shop, or no: it’s just cheap wine, the priests make it themselves, or it’s just grape juice, the priests buy it at the A&P.

this was about to go somewhere when I got distracted. maybe I’ll remember what was coming some other time and try to relaunch.